Pietro, not on purpose, just a coincidence, he’d been riding in the back of his dad’s car. He’d had a black eye and an ugly bruise on his cheek. I’d straightened from where I’d been pawing through trash, and our eyes met. Carefully he turned his head away from me, as if he couldn’t tell me apart from the trash.
I’d hated the Paters ever since.
Gosh, fun times.
I hoisted myself up the rusted ladder, rung by rung, trying not to make a sound when I jarred my ribs or scraped my wing against the narrow wall. Finally, I was at ground level. I waited and listened. Heard not a sound. No, I could hear the mob in the far distance, like the buzz of angry wasps. Shouts, but no gunfire. Because of Clete.
Very carefully I edged the oblong metal cover up, centimeter by centimeter. Still quiet here in the kitchen garden. Neither the cooks nor maids were out here clipping fresh herbs for their rabbit stew or whatever.
Now I was hungry. Great.
The cover was up, I lifted it and moved it sideways. Then I put my hands on the edges and pulled myself up, biting my lip when my wing and ribs got smushed against one side. I was in the garden, behind a thick tea shrub. An excellent spot. I pulled my feet up and silently replaced the cover. I would hang here till I heard the crowd get to the gates.
“You called it, Ernie,” a rough voice said above me. I leaped up but was instantly shoved down by a huge guard in Pater colors. “I was sure she’d go for the east-side street one, but you said kitchen garden, and you was right!”
Oh, goddamnit.
CHAPTER 96
Ernie leaned over me, grinning. “My lord Pater said double wages and extra beer for whoever caught the freak, an’ I’m gonna enjoy it, I’ll tell ya!”
I will never live down the shame of how little effort it took them to knock me down and chink my wrists together behind me. It was probably the easiest thing they’d done all week. I was injured, exhausted, had seen Clete die… all of a sudden I felt like I had no idea who I was or what I was doing. All of my confidence and swagger was gone, knocked out of me, just like my wind.
The two servants pulled me behind them with a rope around my neck—the understanding being that if I caused trouble, it’d be easy enough for them to drag me—and other servants cheered when they saw us. I was guessing their lives were super bleak, since catching a teenager was cause for cheering. Or maybe they would be punished for not cheering.
The men took me down a flight of stone steps, past the big wine cellar and cold pantries that Pietro and I had played hide-and-seek in so many years ago. Every so often it gave Ernie a giggle to suddenly tug on my neck rope to make me stumble. So far I hadn’t actually fallen, so screw you, Ernie. Each time he tugged and I managed to keep my feet, I felt a little better. They might be tiny victories, but I was still winning them.
Since our childhood, vidscreens had been added in the hallway every ten feet or so, and of course the McCallum channel was playing nonstop.
“Remember,” McCallum said, wagging a finger at the screen as we trudged by. “If you steal from your employer, you’re really stealing from yourself! And if you see someone stealing from your employer and say nothing, it’s the same as if you yourself stole!”
God, I hated him. I grabbed onto that hate, let it burn like a small fire in my belly, the only thing keeping me warm. At Tetra I’d heard someone call him a megalomaniac, and I hadn’t known what that meant. They had explained it. Now I could confidently think, “What a complete asswipe megalomaniac” as we took another turn and went through a door into an empty room. I’d been expecting a jail cell, so this seemed better. At first.
Maybe this had once been a break room, or the servants’ living room. It was a bleak, run-down shell now, with the plaster ceiling falling in, mold growing in the corners, the floor covered with a thick layer of dust.
Ernie turned me roughly and unchinked my hands, then yanked the rope from around my neck so hard it left burning scrapes in my skin. But I didn’t cry out. It